1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic device having a biometric authentication function and a data management method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, digitalization of electronic devices has progressed due to a drastic development in information processing technology and communication technology. Also, a reduction in the cost of digital devices has made digital devices widespread in homes. As a result, digital devices have come to be used in various situations in everyday life. For example, a digital still camera, a digital video camera, a portable music player, a mobile phone, a portable information terminal, a digital television, a digital video recorder and the like are currently widely used. Photograph data, video data, music data and the like are handled as digital data by these digital devices. Accordingly, a user can easily delete or edit the data, for example. Also, since data can be easily transferred from these digital devices to a personal computer (hereinafter, a “PC”), a user can manage the data on the PC or the like.
Furthermore, recently, due to the shrinking of the semiconductor manufacturing processes, a high capacity memory has become available at a low price. Thus, by equipping a digital camera or the like with a high capacity memory, a large amount of data can be recorded. As a result, a user is allowed to perform continuous shooting without worrying about the remaining capacity of memory, or to carry a large amount of music data. However, accumulation of large amount of data in the memory has made management of data difficult. Particularly, with a digital device shared by a plurality of users, data stored by a plurality of users are accumulated in the same memory, making a management for each user difficult. As a result, when using data accumulated in the memory, searching for desired data becomes burdensome.
Thus, previously, the burden has been aimed to be reduced by separating folders in which data are to be stored for each user, and having each user refer to his/her own folder at the time of storing or using data. However, with a small digital device with low operability, operation of creating a folder, transferring between folders, or transferring data to a user's own folder is burdensome in the first place. As a technology for reducing such operational burden, JP-A-2005-268951, for example, discloses a technology for associating a function with each finger of a user and performing a function associated with a finger that performed an operation. In this manner, by associating an operation function with each finger for each user, operational burden can be reduced.